


If the World Was Ending

by Lunamaria (Kapori)



Category: Hey Arnold!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29665920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kapori/pseuds/Lunamaria
Summary: It didn't matter that she had a list of problems longer than she could keep track of. Or that she might always believe he deserved someone better than her. Or that she was a Pataki and he was a Shortman. She loved him, and that was so much bigger than everything else.
Relationships: Helga Pataki/Arnold Shortman
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	If the World Was Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever just write something and not know how you feel about it? This honestly turned out different than I expected, so I may revisit it later. But I wanted it buttoned up and out in the world, so enjoy! This doesn't *technically* contradict anything set up in TJM, but it's more-or-less a companion to my other piece, The Pataki Inebriation. I have a few ideas floating around in this, er, universe? Series of one shots? I will probably write more, but this is the one that was nagging at me. 
> 
> When I first heard the JP Saxe/Julia Michaels song of the same name, I was thinking it was a concept that would work so well for a Arnold/Helga fic. Thus, here we are.

Helga didn't know how she stomached her poetry workshop, to be perfectly honest.

Sure, she could handle analyzing the American classics. The melodrama of Elizabethan poems pushed the envelope of her patience, but she could find things to appreciate. Even the mixed bag that was modern poetry had its highlights. But her group's latest focus, on romantic poems of all things, had Helga one rhyming couplet away from jumping off a cliff.

_How do I love thee? Let me count the ways._

Criminy. _How do I love thee?_ Let Helga count the ways she would lose her lunch. 

This particular unit in her workshop was nothing but a thorn in her side. Love wasn't anything like the lies told in these cornball poems. Helga had said as much, hands behind her head and legs crossed. The picture of indifference as she lounged on Dr. Bliss's couch. 

It had been the meat of their conversation in this week's therapy session. Helga, complaining about what seemed like nothing. Dr. Bliss, patiently countering with her insight. 

Eventually, Dr. Bliss had coolly prompted, "Don't you think that's what Bob would say?"

The Patakis were a sore subject. That ground had already been tread over the course of years, but sometimes her therapist hit the nail on the head too often. It's exactly what Bob would have said. He would call the poems _yackum, sentimtal garbage, lies_. He wouldn't even waste his breath reading one line from John Keats. 

Even before Dr. Bliss had said it, Helga knew it was a thought she had to consider and dismantle. It wasn't Helga's thought or Helga's disdain; it wasn't who she was or who she wanted to be. 

Dr. Bliss always liked to gently remind Helga – how far she'd come, how much she'd grown, how much she could still grow. How much Helga owed it to herself, to continue to be the person she was capable of being outside the family she’d been raised in. 

She had worked through years of resentment, building up what she'd torn down for as long as she could remember. It was an uphill process, but she was so sick of being angry. Of holding herself captive in Olga's shadow. Of being desperate for something out of reach.

She was still wrapping her brain around it, but Helga was beginning to believe she was enough. Dr. Bliss said she had proven to herself her mountains could be moved. It was a first step, letting go of what she didn't want to carry anymore. 

True, her heart was a mass of knots. And she had days where she felt like she was running an endless marathon behind Olga. Chasing after Bob's approval, Miriam's attention, the unreasonable weight of her own expectations. But she did her best, patiently untangling each as it came to corner her. 

It was the first time in her life she had prioritized herself. 

Of course, they had also talked about Arnold. How she loved him. How she had for her entire life. How he saw past the hard contours of her armor. Against all sense or reason, he knew her depths. It was a gift as much as it was a burden. To be known frightened her; for years, she repaid that kindness with nothing but her signature Pataki disdain. 

“Isn’t that something worth writing about? That love?” Dr. Bliss had quipped. Helga had pointedly ignored that, as she sometimes did when queries or advice landed too close to home. 

Even if she wasn’t prepared to write about her feelings, she didn't want to be that person anymore. She didn't want to see the world like Bob or like Miriam – like something to turn her back on. Like something she owed nothing to. She wanted to exist outside the spiteful creed of the Patakis. 

Which brought her to the following shitty-yet-necessary realization: she couldn't have Arnold. Not now. Not when she was still shedding layers of anger like a second skin. It wasn't fair to either of them to pursue...whatever it was they had been on the precipice of. Not as she grew more into herself, changing piece by piece. 

She wanted him, but she wanted herself more. She wanted herself first. 

_End scene, oi. Not the time to wallow, Pataki_. 

Helga zoned back into the half-written essay on her screen, hand resting across the creased pages of her poetry textbook. The cursor blinked over her last sentence like a taunt, Dr. Bliss's advice winking in and out against the white and black document. The last thing written was some contrived nonsense about the significance of the color red. 

_Yeah, right. Not even_ you're _buying that._

Still, she wanted to at least try. 

As she began typing her next oh-so-original thought, the ring of her cell phone pierced the silence of Helga's concentration. The name _Pheebs!_ popped up on her screen as she turned her phone over. 

Helga paused, adding another bite to the end of her pen cap. She let it ring until the screen went black, turning back to her work. Must have gone to voicemail. She would get back to Phoebe after tackling her begrudging analysis of Neruda's _If You Forget Me_. 

The ringtone started in again, the same bland jingle Helga hadn't bothered to update chiming in and out. Phoebe's name again. Helga grabbed for her phone, curiosity piqued. Her friend never called twice, and she definitely never stooped so low – _the horror, right?_ – as to not leave a voicemail.

"Pheebs, yeah sorry," Helga drawled, "but can I call you back? I'm in the middle–"

Phoebe cut her off immediately. Helga, too surprised to deliver the cutting remark she would normally ruffle Phoebe with, listened to the panicked explanation of her friend. 

Words like _Arnold's_ _grandfather_ and _heart_ and _hospital_ sliced through the phone like knives. Helga could barely make them out over the tremble in Phoebe's voice, but they were there and they were so suddenly terrible and real, the world around her closed in. 

It was crazy, wasn't it? How the world could slow down with one phone call. That was all it took to see how everything could stutter to a halt, bumping along until every single thing was suspended in amber. Time became something still and untouchable. 

Her assignment, which had seemed so important before, was the farthest thing from her mind. The worries that had clouded her mind dissipated as understanding sunk in.

Phoebe said more, gave details that were probably important, but they drifted away before she could hear. It was some slow, drawn out echo outside of Helga's awareness. 

Helga ran. 

* * *

Helga saw Phoebe and Gerald first, resting against each other in a pair of hard plastic chairs. They untangled, standing to meet her, but she passed them both as Arnold came into view. Her mind, whose only objective was to find him, hushed. 

There he was – head in his hands, shoulders dropped, rumpled clothing. Her heart stopped as he picked his head up to regard her. She had a thousand questions – _what happened to your grandfather? How? Is he going to be okay?_ – but none of them seemed important anymore. Not as they watched each other across the hall, still and silent. His eyes and hers.

Helga broke into a run. Arnold rushed to meet her. 

They crashed into each other. It didn't matter now, how they had come together and pulled apart. How they walked away with a lifetime of unfinished business. How they had edged something dangerously close to love, just to step back. 

All that mattered was this; holding onto one another, being together. 

It didn't matter that she had a list of problems longer than she could keep track of. Or that she might always believe he deserved someone better than her. Or that she was a Pataki and he was a Shortman. 

She loved him, and that was so much bigger than everything else. She said as much, face turned into his shoulder. At her muffled words, he held her tighter. Like she was the only safe place for him in a world suddenly turned upside down. 

"Helga," he whispered against her hair. Ridiculously, she was the first to cry. 

"Arnold." It was all she could manage as her eyes burned hot with tears. 

"You came," he said. The feeling of his tears against her cheek broke her heart in so many ways and into so many pieces, she could hardly breathe. It was the worst feeling in the world, to be unable to take his grief away. He was afraid and all she could do was hold him. 

"Of course," Helga said. There was nothing else to say, she realized. Arnold was a chance she would always take, the _yes_ to so many of her questions. Her friend and the sum of so much more. 

"You're always here when it counts, Helga." 

"I'll always come for you," she said and held him closer. 

**Author's Note:**

> It didn't matter to the fic, so I didn't include it...but nothing bad is happening to Grandpa Phil on my watch.


End file.
